Vladimir Lenin

Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight!

Written:First part or August 1918First Published:17 January, 1925 inRabochaya MoahvaNo. 14; Published according to the ManuscriptSource:Lenin’s Collected Works, 	Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1965, pages 53-57Translated (and edited):Jim RiordanTranscription/HTML Markup:David WaltersOnline Version:V.I.Lenin 	Internet Archive, 2002

The Soviet Republic is surrounded by enemies. But it will defeat
      its enemies at home and abroad. A rising spirit which will
      ensure victory is already perceptible among the working
      people. We already see how frequent the sparks and explosions of
      the revolutionary conflagration in Western Europe have become,
      inspiring us with the assurance that the triumph of the world
      workers’ revolution is not far off.

The external foe of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic at
    present is British, French, American and Japanese
    imperialism. This foe is attacking Russia, is plundering our
    territory, has seized Archangel and (if the French newspapers are
    to be believed) has advanced from Vladivostok to Nikolsk
    Ussuriisky. This foe has bribed the generals and officers of the
    Czechoslovak Corps. This enemy is attacking peaceful Russia with
    the ferocity and voracity of the Germans in February, the only
    difference being that the British and Japanese are out to seize
    and plunder Russian territory and to overthrow the Soviet
    government so as to “restore the front”, i.e., to draw
    Russia again into the imperialist (or more simply, the predatory)
    war between Britain and Germany.

The British and Japanese capitalists want to restore the power
    of the landowners and capitalists in Russia in order to share with
    them the booty captured in the war; they want to shackle the
    Russian workers and peasants to British and French capital, to
    squeeze out of them interest on the billions advanced in loans,
    and to extinguish the fire of socialist revolution which has
    broken out in our country and which is threatening to spread
    across the world.

The British and Japanese imperialist savages are not strong
      enough to occupy and subjugate Russia. Even neighbouring Germany
      is not strong enough for that, as was shown by her
      “experience” in the Ukraine. The British and
      Japanese counted on taking us unawares. They failed. The
      Petrograd workers, followed by the Moscow workers, and after
      Moscow the workers of the entire central industrial region, are
      rising more untidily, with growing persistence and courage and
      in ever larger numbers. That is a sure sign we shall win.

In launching their attack on peaceful Russia the British and
      Japanese capitalist robbers are also counting on alliance with the
      internal enemy of the Soviet government. We all know who that
      internal enemy is. It is the capitalists, the landowners, the
      kulaks, and their offspring, who hate the government of the
      workers and working peasants-the peasants who do not suck the
      blood of their fellow-villagers.

A wave of kulak revolts is sweeping across Russia. The kulak
    hates the Soviet government like poison and is prepared to
    strangle and massacre hundreds of thousands of workers. We know
    very well that if the kulaks were to gain the upper hand they
    would ruthlessly slaughter hundreds of thousands of workers, in
    alliance with the landowners and capitalists, restore
    back-breaking conditions for the workers, abolish the eight-hour
    day and hand back the mills and factories to the capitalists.

That was the case in all earlier European revolutions when, as
    a result of the weakness of the workers, the kulaks succeeded in
    turning back from a republic to a monarchy, from a working
    people’s government to the despotism of the exploiters, the
    rich and the parasites. This happened before our very eyes in
    Latvia, Finland, the Ukraine and Georgia. Everywhere the
    avaricious, bloated and bestial kulaks joined hands with the
    landowners and capitalists against the workers and against the
    poor generally. Everywhere the kulaks wreaked their vengeance on
    the working class with incredible ferocity. Everywhere they joined
    hands withthe foreign capitalists against the workers of
    their own country. That is the way the Cadets, the Right
    Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have been acting: we
    have only to remember their exploits in
    “Czechoslovakia”.[22] That is the way the Left
    Socialist-Revolutionaries, in their crass stupidityand
    spinelessness, acted too when they revolted in Moscow, thus
    assisting the whiteguards in Yaroslavi and the Czechs and the
    Whites in Kazan. No wonder these Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
    were praised by Kerensky and his friends, the French
    imperialists.

There is no doubt about it. The kulaks are rabid foes of the
    Soviet government. Either the kulaks massacre vast numbers of
    workers, or the workers ruthlessly suppress the revolts of the
    predatory kulak minority of the people against the working
    people’s government. There can be no middle course. Peace is
    out of the question: even if they have quarrelled, the kulak can
    easily come to terms with the landowner, the tsar and the priest,
    but with the working classnever.

That is why we call the fight against the kulaks the last,
    decisive fight. That does not mean there may not be many more
    kulak revolts, or that there may not be many more attacks on the
    Soviet government by foreign capitalism. The words, the last
    fight, imply that the last and most numerous of theexploiting
    classeshas revolted against us in our country.

The kulaks are the most brutal, callous and savage exploiters,
    who in the history of other countries have time and again restored
    the power of the landowners, tsars, priests and capitalists. The
    kulaks are more numerous than the landowners and
    capitalists. Nevertheless, they are a minority.

Let us take it that there are about fifteen million peasant
    families in Russia, taking Russia as she was before the robbers
    deprived her of the Ukraine and other territories. Of these
    fifteen million, probably ten million are poor peasants who live
    by selling their labour power, or who are in bondage to the rich,
    or who lack grain surpluses and have been most impoverished by the
    burdens of war. About three million must be regarded as middle
    peasants, while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich
    peasants, grain profiteers. These bloodsuckers have grown rich on
    the want suffered by the people in the war; they have raked in
    thousands and hundreds of thousands of rubles by pushing up the
    price of grain and other products. These spiders have grown fat at
    the expense of the peasants ruined by the war, at the expense of
    the starving workers. These leeches have sucked the blood of the
    working people and grown richer as the workers in the cities and
    factories starved. These vampires have been gathering the landed
    estates into their hands; they continue to enslave the poor
      peasants.

Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! Hatred and contempt
      for the parties which defend them-the Right
      Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and today's Left
      Socialist-Revolutionaries! The workers must crush the revolts of
      the kulaks with an iron hand, the kulaks who are forming an
      alliance with the foreign capitalists against the working people
      of their own country.

The kulaks take advantage of the ignorance, the disunity and
      isolation of the poor peasants. They incite them against the
      workers. Sometimes they bribe them while permitting them to
      "make a bit", a hundred rubles or so, by profiteering in grain
      (at the same time robbing the poor peasants of many thousands of
      rubles). The kulaks try to win the support of the middle
      peasants, and they sometimes succeed.

But there is no reason why the working class should quarrel with
      the middle peasant. The workers cannot come to terms with the
      kulak, but they may seek, and are seeking, anagreementwith the middle peasant. The workers' government, the Bolshevik
      government,has provedthat in deed.

We proved it by passing the law on the "socialisation of land"
      and strictly carrying it into effect. That law containsnumerousconcessions to the interests and views of the
      middle peasant.

We proved it (the other day) bytreblinggrain prices";
      for we fully realise that the earnings of the middle peasant are
      often disproportionate to present-day prices for manufactured
      goods andmustbe raised.

Every class-conscious worker will explain this to the middle
      peasant and will patiently, persistently, and repeatedly point
      out to him that socialism is infinitely more beneficial for him
      than a government of the tsars, landowners and capitalists.

The workers' government has never wronged and never will wrong
      the middle peasant. But the government of the tsars, landowners,
      capitalists and kulaks not only always wronged the middle
      peasant, but stifled, plundered, and ruined him outright. And
      this is true of all countries without exception, Russia
      included.

The class-conscious worker’s programme is the closest
    alliance and complete unity with the poor peasants; concessions to
    and agreement with the middle peasants; ruthless suppression of
    the kulaks, those bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people
    and profiteers, who batten on famine. That is the policy of the
    working class.